


Hopeless

by codswallop



Category: Love and Rockets (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon LGBTQ Character, Drinking & Talking, F/F, Hopey is a punk rocker, Pining, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:18:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who cares where Maggie is tonight? Not Hopey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hopeless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violeteyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violeteyes/gifts).



> Takes place sometime before the events in "The Death of Speedy Ortiz," when Maggie and Hopey are still living with Izzy and sleeping on the pull-out sofa.
> 
> Many thanks to ollipop for beta-reading!

Hopey never calls her Perla or Perlita, not even in her thoughts. Not anymore. When they were still just kids, maybe, once or twice, she’d had stupid daydreams about stupid pet names they’d only use when there was nobody around to hear.

Now she only calls her Maggot. Maggot, Maggot, Maggot. No one can accuse her of being tender in the head or in the heart. She’ll bite their ears off if they try.

*

Maggie never manages to make it to hear the band play. Doesn’t matter. Fuck, they’re terrible, Hopey’d avoid it like the plague too if she weren’t in it. Hopey knows she looks hot playing bass, though. She can feel Terry looking, trying not to look. The too-young, trying-too-hard kids in the first few rows next to the stage, they stare up at her like she’s a fucking _vision_. Hopey doesn’t let it go to her head, though. She hardly even looks at the crowd out there, matter of fact, ’cause if she does she’ll let herself start looking for Maggie, even though she knows damn well she’s at work or can’t get a ride or she’s mooning around after some dumb cholo down at the liquor store. Stupid Maggot. 

Stupid, hopeful Hopey. She knows better than to scan the crowd for familiar faces, but she glances up once anyway without meaning to. Just once, not even really looking, but right in the front row there’s a face gazing up at her that almost stops her heart: her wide-eyed moon-faced Maggot at fifteen, goofy hat and all. Isn’t her, of course. Just some kid. Doesn’t even look that much like Maggie, really, she tells herself, after the lights come up in between sets and the kid’s still hanging around the stage, watching them pack up.

Terry watches Hopey not-watching the starstruck not-Maggie. She doesn’t say anything, but she arches one cool eyebrow so pointedly that Hopey finally elbow-checks her and says “Shut up.”

“She’s kind of _cute_ , though,” Terry teases. “Don’t you think? Hey, where’s Maggie tonight, anyway?”

Hopey points a finger in her face. “I said. Shut. Up.”

“Ooooh. Touchy subject? Sure, I get it,” Terry says, smiling like a shark, and jumps back fast to avoid being stomped.

The girl doesn’t taste, smell, feel like Maggie at all, Hopey discovers an hour later, kissing her up against the smeary wall of a bathroom stall. Too sweet, too skinny, too eager to grab Hopey’s hand and guide it up her skirt. Hopey yanks her hand back and pulls away, wiping away the taste of bubblegum lip balm. “Sorry. I gotta… If my girlfriend found out...she gets real jealous, ya know?” Then scrams her ass out of there without looking back to see how the kid takes it.

*

There was a time in Hopey’s life, probably, when she learned to be mean as a snake so no one would guess what a soft scared marshmallow she was on the inside. Now she’s mean because it’s who she is. Venom ate away the soft center of her long ago, and that’s how she likes it. Not cruel, not petty-mean, just _sharp_. It’s the best way to be and also the most fun. Safest, too--most people know not to fuck with her.

Every now and then, though, not always, there’s a way Maggie has of making her feel all liquidy and achy-tender at the core. There’s no telling what might set it off: the sound of her laugh, or the way she sticks her tongue out a little when she’s working with her hands, fixing something, or the stupid open trusting expression on her face when she looks up at Hopey all of a sudden. It makes Hopey want to grab her hand and just run somewhere with her, anywhere, everywhere.

Or just run away, other times. Nothing good’s going to come of the way she’s soft for the Maggot. If nothing else she ought to work on playing hard to get. Who are the guys Maggie always falls hardest for? The ones who barely act like she exists, that’s who. (Fucking eejits, all of them.)

So Hopey plays it cold, when she remembers to. Mostly it’s not even an act, really. Who cares where Maggie is tonight? Not her.

*

Joey is mooching around Izzy’s house when Hopey gets back and lets herself in with the key she remembered to keep on her for once. She’s dead tired for no reason and all she’s thinking about now is bed, but here’s her annoying little shit of a brother sitting up at the kitchen table, pretending to drink one of Izzy’s weird-smelling teas.

“Who died?” Hopey asks, yawning in the doorway. “Ma, I hope.”

Izzy crosses herself and fusses something under her breath, shaking her head.

“Nah. Too mean.” Joey openly and obviously looks past Hopey, over her shoulder, and she takes off one of her shoes and throws it at him. It misses him and hits the tea, splashing it across the table.

“I haven’t seen her tonight,” she snaps at Joey. “Go home and masturbate to one of those big-boobed pinup girls hanging on your bedroom wall, why don’t you?”

Izzy sighs. She fetches a dishrag and tosses it at Hopey. “Clean up the spill and take yourself out of my kitchen. And be grateful you have a younger brother who comes by to visit you on a Saturday night instead of inciting gang warfare on the city streets and impregnating fourteen-year-olds.”

“Ha! Only in his wettest dreams.” Hopey flicks the damp rag in Joey’s face. “He came looking for Maggie, not me.”

“I came looking for both of you,” Joey protests, following her out into the living room as she hops on one foot, putting her shoe back on as she goes. “Uh...thanks for the tea, Izzy!” he calls back over his shoulder. “Whew. Thanks for spilling it,” he mutters to Hopey. “Who knows what that witch’s brew would have turned me into?”

“I’m telling her you said that, and she’ll never let you darken her doorstep again. What do you want from me and my Maggot?”

“Oh ho, _your_ Maggot?” Joey jabs her in the arm, and she elbows him hard in the gut, then leaps on his back while he’s doubled over, knocking him to the floor so she can frisk him.

“Hey! Hands off my ass, you perv!” Joey howls, but Hopey’s already fished the flask out of his back pocket and is unscrewing it for a sniff.

“Cough syrup, bet you anything,” she says, but it’s not, and she takes a quick swig, sitting back on her heels in surprise. “Whoa. Where’d you get this?”

“Doyle owed me a favor. It’s from Bumper’s, black-label stuff from their top shelf.”

“Nahhh, it’s cheap-ass rotgut, they just pour it in a fancy bottle so they can charge the drunks more for it,” Hopey jeers, but she takes another gulp and nearly chokes. “Eesh! It’s strong enough, though. What were you planning on doing with all this, you little junior alkie? Don’t you get your fill of drunk’n’disorderly from living with Pop?”

“I owe Maggie a couple of drinks.” Joey snatches the flask away from her. “And I was going to let you have some too, but you already just took your share.”

“Ha! You thought you’d get Maggie liquored up while I was out at my gig so you could cop a feel, more like. Admit it!”

Joey puts on an injured face. “I didn’t know you had a gig. I was looking for you both.”

“Hmmm. Hoping you could get us drunk and then watch us make out for a while, ey? Now who’s the perv?”

“Hey, I don’t want to watch you do your lezzer stuff!” Joey leaps up and jams the flask back into his pocket. “Shit, Hopey. I come around here trying to do something _nice_ , and all you do is try to twist it up into something--”

“Oh, all right, all right. You’re an innocent angel and I’m the bad seed. Come on, come back, stick around a while. The Maggot’ll turn up any minute now, I bet.”

Joey wavers at the door. “You think?”

Hopey doubts it, but the hot burn of liquor in her throat is a pleasant distraction, and she’s awake again now. “Yeah. I don’t know. Probably. And, hey! I got some pictures from Daffy today, that time her friend’s neighbors were away and we all snuck into their pool? I’ll let you look at ’em for another drink.”

“Maggie in a bathing suit?” Joey’s already pulling out the flask and plunking himself down on the rug again, practically drooling at the thought.

“Nope. T-shirt and underwear. Soaking wet.”

He’s all eyes. “Liar.”

Hopey smiles, bats her eyelashes a few times, and takes the snapshots out of her inside jacket pocket, holding them up teasingly for a minute before letting Joey grab them away from her. She plucks the flask from his unprotesting hand a minute later and helps herself to another swig--two for good measure. She hadn’t been planning on showing those pictures to anyone. Maggie’s last act will be killing her before she dies dead if she finds out. But it’s sort of her own fault for not being here, right?

*

An hour later, the flask is nearly empty and Hopey is lying on her back beneath Izzy’s coffee table, adding on to the drawing in Sharpie pen she started under there the last time she got good and drunk. It started out as a lizard, but its feet wound up looking like human hands, so now she’s reworking the head to make it into a sort of demon-thing. Izzy’s going to flip if she ever gets around to noticing it. 

“It’s crazy thinking about the way she was back then,” Hopey is saying. “So totally different, only not, you know? I never in a million years would have thought we’d end up friends, and here we are. Or here I am. Fuck knows where she is. She’s so, she’s such a _space case_ half the time, I just wanna… But I wouldn’t change her for anything, either. Do you think she’s changed ’cause of hanging around me so much?” Hopey wonders suddenly, letting the pen fall. “What do you think? Joey?”

Joey is passed out with his face in one of Izzy’s art books, a puddle of drool forming between his cheek and a Renoir nude. “Lightweight,” Hopey chides, nudging him in the ribs with her foot, and just then there’s a click in the front door lock, Maggie letting herself in.

“Oh.” She blinks at them. “You’re here. You’re awake. Joey’s here? How was the show?”

Joey comes miraculously back to life at the sound of her voice and sits up, rubbing his face. “Maggie! I brought you drinks an’ you weren’t here but we saved you...where’s the...oh. There’s a little left! My jerk-ass sister drank most of it.”

“Did not.” Hopey’s back under the table, absorbed in her drawing again, but she kicks at him. “And shut up. You’re as drunk as a skunk.”

“You’re as drunk as two skunks, then,” Joey says. “Three skunks. A pile of skunks! She was talking her head off,” he confides to Maggie. “All this shit about you, and how much she--”

Hopey springs up, kicking the table over and lunging for him, taking him down hard and getting a hand over his mouth, which he bites, making her scream, and Izzy comes tearing out of her room to give them all hell.

*

When things finally quiet down and Joey’s been sent on his way and Izzy has run out of swear words in at least three languages and gone back to bed, Maggie takes Hopey into the bathroom and cleans her bitten fingers with Bactine. 

“Ow!”

“Oh, stop.” Maggie smacks her lightly on the back of the hand. “ _You_ are feeling no pain right now. What were you thinking? Sheesh!” She hunts for Band-Aids while Hopey glowers. “And you didn’t even save me more’n two drops, and I need a drink right now like you wouldn’t believe.”

Maggie smells like food, but not the greaseburgers she usually reeks of when she comes home straight off a shift. Hopey tries not to imagine Rand Race wining and dining her at some fancy restaurant. She’s too drunk not to ask, though.

“So? Where ya been, Gunga Din?”

“At my cousin’s thing. Party. You know. I helped with catering?” she goes on, when Hopey looks blank. “I told you about it forever ago!”

“No.”

“Oh yes.” Maggie pulls a battered box of Spider-Man bandages from the top shelf of Izzy’s medicine cabinet and fishes one out.

“You did?” It sounds a little familiar. Maybe.

“ _Yes._ Goddamn, Hopeless! It’s always in one ear and out the other with you. I told you fifty times. It sucked hard, but I made a pile of cash. Brought home a lot of little sandwiches and crab puffs and things, too, which I was _gonna_ share with you, but…”

“But nothing. Where are they? I’m starved!”

“No way! You’ll just puke ’em up again.” Maggie has been doing battle with the Band-Aid packaging and finally manages to pull it apart. “Give me your hand again.”

“One teeny, tiny sandwich?” Hopey pleads, making eyes at her, but Maggie ignores her and focuses with adorable frowning concentration on applying the slippery little piece of sticky plastic to exactly the right spot. “C’mon, Mag! Have a heart!”

“Do you know how many times my butt got pinched tonight? Half the time by my own relations? I won those canapes the hard way.”

“Poor Maggot. Lemme kiss it better.”

“Oh, go sleep it off,” Maggie scolds, shoving her gently out of the bathroom. “And drink some water first. I gotta take a shower before I go to bed.”

*

Hopey is watching the ceiling circle loopily round and round when Maggie climbs into the sofa bed next to her, soap-smelling and warm, with a plate of smuggled snacks. “Hey,” Hopey mumbles. “Gimme some ’a that.”

Maggie tsks. “Aren’t you passed out yet?” 

“Nope.” Hopey leans over and bites a crab puff out of Maggie’s fingers. With her mouth full it’s easier not to say all the stupid alcohol-fueled shit she was thinking while Maggie was in the shower. Only one thing leaks out, in a spray of crumbs. “Saw a girl at the show who looked like you tonight. Little baby Maggot.”

“Yeah?” Maggie’s busy inhaling finger sandwiches, only half-listening to her.

“Uh-huh. Not as cute, though.”

“Oh, puh-lease.” Maggie makes a face, crossing her eyes, but then her expression softens. “Sorry I missed seeing you again.”

“Eh, whatever. We suck donkey balls.”

“Yeah, but still. I woulda been there, you know, but the money...if I can get another gig or two like this, I could put a deposit down somewhere, maybe.”

Hopey’s stomach goes cold. “What, you want to move out?”

Maggie blinks, clear-eyed and blank. “Don’t you? I’d rather have our own space, even if it’s crappy. No?”

“Oh.” The cold feeling melts all at once. “I mean...yeah, sure, if you want to. Yeah. Okay.”

Maggie gives her a funny look, squinting at her, and Hopey can’t tell what she’s seeing. With eyes like those, seems like she’d be able to x-ray through right to the soft and squishy center of her, but if she can, she doesn’t say anything about it. All she does is lean over and give Hopey a wet smack of a kiss, right in the middle of her forehead. 

“Go to sleep, goofhead,” Maggie tells her, and reaches across Hopey to set the mostly-empty plate down on the end table. Then she freezes up and gives a squeak. “What the-- Where’d you get these?!”

Oh. The pool pictures. She’d meant to hide those. Hopey slaps a hand down on them fast before Maggie can grab them and tear them up. “Daffy. Keep your pants on, no one else saw ’em. I like ’em.”

“I _shoulda_ kept my pants on. I look like a beached whale! Fuck. I gotta go on a diet yesterday.”

“Shut up.” Hopey flicks her on the ear. “You’re perfect.” She picks up the last lonely crab puff and takes a bite, then feeds the rest to Maggie. 

“You’re crazy in the head,” Maggie grumbles, after she’s swallowed it down. “And also half-wasted.”

Hopey feels more than half wasted. She’s drunk enough to spill all the secrets out of her liquefied soul. “Perfect Perla,” she says, and switches off the lamp, then gropes to pull Maggie’s head down to hers in the dark, kissing her and kissing her until Maggie laughs, and yields, and kisses her back for real.


End file.
